Stop Kony, yes. But don’t stop asking questions

My mother’s family are members of the Acholi tribe, and they hail from Gulu, a town in Northern Uganda. Northern Uganda is a place which has experienced significant ups and downs in recent decades, but all the same I was very surprised to come home last night to find talk of it all over Twitter. And the hashtags continued this morning – #stopkony, #Kony2012, #stopKony2012, #InvisibleChildren, #MakeKonyFamous, #CoverTheNight, #LRA, #Uganda. All of a sudden, my family’s region was famous – or, at least, trending on Twitter. What was all this about?

The previous afternoon, I had received a message from a friend, the Nigerian poet and playwright Inua Ellams, asking if I had seen a video with a very moving message. I clicked on the link that he’d sent through, and what emerged was a painfully familiar tale. The video, created by Invisible Children, an American NGO, tells the story of Joseph Kony, and his horrific activities in Northern Uganda. For over twenty years, he and his Lord’s Resistance Army (or LRA) have been abducting children from villages there – boys so they can fight as soldiers in his army, girls so they can be subjected to rape and sexual enslavement. The video is part of a campaign, coming to a head this year, which aims to use a series of vigils to raise awareness of Kony’s atrocities. In doing so, Invisible Children aim to encourage the powers that be to stop this brutality and blood-letting.

Invisible Children has had some success already: late last year, President Barack Obama committed 100 US troops to provide “advice and assistance” to the Ugandan army in removing Joseph Kony from the battlefield. The President’s move came in part due to the NGO’s tremendous advocacy efforts. Everyone agrees that this a hugely important issue, but Invisible Children’s methods have come in for searing criticism; most scathingly, they have been attacked as “neo-liberal, do-good Whiteness”. Elsewhere, Foreign Affairs has provided some important context on this matter, in relation to Uganda’s strategic importance to the USA. I would also recommend the Twitter feed of Laura Seay, who was moved to comment this morning that “[Solomme Lemma] is tweeting links to great community-based organizations working in Northern Uganda. Give there if you really want to help.

I understand the anger and resentment at Invisible Children’s approach, which with its paternalism has unpleasant echoes of colonialism. I will admit to being perturbed by its apparent top-down prescriptiveness, when so much diligent work is already being done at Northern Uganda’s grassroots. On the other hand, I am very happy – relieved, more than anything – that Invisible Children have raised worldwide awareness of this issue. Murderers and torturers tend to prefer anonymity, and if not that then respectability: that way, they can go about their work largely unhindered. For too many years, the subject of this trending topic on Twitter was only something that I heard about in my grandparents’ living room, as relatives and family friends gathered for fruitless and frustrated hours of discussion. Watching the video, though, I was concerned at the simplicity of the approach that Invisible Children seemed to have taken.

The thing is that Joseph Kony has been doing this for a very, very, very long time. He emerged about a quarter of a century, which is about the same time that Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni came to power. As a result the fates of these two leaders must, I think, be viewed together. Yet, though President Museveni must be integral to any solution to this problem, I didn’t hear him mentioned once in the 30-minute video. I thought that this was a crucial omission. Invisible Children asked viewers to seek the engagement of American policymakers and celebrities, but – and this is a major red flag – it didn’t introduce them to the many Northern Ugandans already doing fantastic work both in their local communities and in the diaspora. It didn’t ask its viewers to seek diplomatic pressure on President Museveni’s administration.

About ten minutes into the video, the narrator asks his young son who “the bad guy” in Uganda is; when his young son hesitates, he informs him that Joseph Kony is the bad guy. In a sense, he let Kony off lightly: he is a monster. But what the narrator also failed to do was mention to his son that when a bad guy like Kony is running riot for years on end, raping and slashing and seizing and shooting, then there is most likely another host of bad guys out there letting him get on with it. He probably should have told him that, too.

I don’t think that Invisible Children are naïve. I don’t think that President Obama was ever blind to this matter either: his own father, a Kenyan, hails from the Luo, the same tribal group that has suffered so much at the hands of Kony. My hunch – and hope – is that they see this campaign as a way to encourage wider and deeper questions about wholly inadequate governance in this area of Africa.

appreciated the analysis. Thank you. This is so necessary in an age in which consumerism has even invaded the news and the mind. Too easy to hear of a campaign and just jump on it.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Johnny-Barker/670850042 Johnny Barker

Your assumption that there is no one who can step up and fix all of the ‘problems’ is the exact thing that needs to change. Just because nobody has informed you of a plan doesn’t mean there isn’t one. You ask questions as though no one would think to ask themselves the same things. Instead of spending time and energy trying to appear smart by trying to debunk the idea of people uniting to stand up for what is right and demand from their governments to step in and ensure this won’t continue. Would you pay more taxes for a program like that? I would. I don’t let man made lines in the ground dictate where my care or concern goes, we are all human.

doranncohen

If it not for the video, I would not have read this article. I think everyone realizes that Kony is not the only monster out there. But the fact that this video has gained so much social attention is amazing. The video has inspired millions of young people to get involved. If It works (as it seems it already has) to stop Kony…then the message is clear…anything is possible. We could stop a huge host of heinous atrocities around the globe. People will not feel so helpless in making change happen. While your aticle has many valid points, I hope articles like these do not thwart the momentum of this effort.

ramirofuxcampa

I think exactly the same as you. I think eventhought there are many other bad people arround the world it is important to at least start moving against all these bad things. It is also good that this video involves young people on the society problems. I hope there will be more videos lik this that try to help society involving young people.

denissm

Is amazing how now a days a single video can be seeing all over the world. I’m really amazed and happy that a lot of young people like me are supporting this children and I think that many people feel the way I am. This article really opens my eyes, I’m agreeing that there are other people behind this; kony is not only “the bad guy”, and maybe there are more people behind kony. I think that video didn’t mention a lot of things that need to be explained, and not just talking to us like a kid of 5 years old.

LFCS

It is pretty interesting how, they call the attention of people, to make Kony famous. I also like the way the narrator makes people understand easier things by asking his son questions, I also agree that if they capture Kony, other bad guys will keep doing exactly as Knoy, so perhaps is not only to capture Kony, but everybody involved.

robertinjapan

It got a message out that was not for profit,it educated people about Uganda,it opened an area that many want to forget. There was a movie a while back called Johnny mad dog or the other way round. It deals directly about this cause. The movie did not get general release because the financial industry that funds many movies deemed it was not suitable to the sensitivities of the general public. Many rich countries have forgotten the plight of these nations. What this movie was aiming for is and was, and should be as important to whatever it achieves. For me like a lot of people it pulled the heart strings. Not just because the name Uganda brings flashbacks to me.
I heard a Ugandan reporter answer about the critics to this movie by saying ” In Uganda we have food shortages and droughts that come and go, when we have a drought and it begins to rain we rush out with things to collect the water,we should harvest this interest in Uganda with the same way as we do with water in times of drought… responsibly.
Uganda to me will always have a place in my heart as a country and a ship.

Rebecca Akrofie

What about al-Bashir of Sudan? Darfur anyone? I know this is one step at a time and that awareness is essential. but this has been going on since 1986! I think we should be catching Kony AND Museveni, not one or the other. Invisible Children appear naive, even if they are not, and with the anger and upset that the screening of KONY 2012 has caused in Uganda, including the lack of local testimony, these guys have A LOT of questions to answer….